I’m heading off to QuiltCon! I plan on eating and drinking and learning and laughing for five days straight.

I whipped up a couple of tops I hope to share soon, as well as a quilted sunglasses sleeve and a notebook cover! Look – I’ve already collected quite a few pins for the #quiltconpinswap! Fabric is from Carolyn Friedlander’s beautiful line, Doe.

I have two quilts to show! One, I made this summer. It is a king-sized version of Trapezoids at Work. It is made in solids (except for one newspaper collage print) and was quilted with scallops. Pardon the draping in this shot – king-sized quilts are heavy.

For quilting, I used A SLEW of tips from this craftsy class – Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine. Cannot recommend enough.The king-sized quilt was for a client, but I loved the colors and overall look so much, I made it a baby sister. The below is about 60″ by 75″ or something.

It’s 22 degrees in the Ann Arbor area today. My coat had a broken zipper and I was debating whether to attempt a fix or just buy a new jacket. But it is warm and fits well, and it turns out JoAnn Fabrics had heavy duty zippers in 26″ lengths.

I had to pop-off the male snaps in order to fix the zipper. I put buttons to cover the holes. A bit of nonsensical aesthetics.

A friend says the local cleaners would charge about $65 for a similar zipper replacement.

$6 zipper + 1.5 hours of my time (always an existential dilemma placing a worth on my time…) = maybe $24? I am very happy to know how to manage these tasks.

I framed a solid square with fun prints – most of them from Made By Rae’s line Lotus Pond. Three sides but leaving a little corner stone allowed for me to embrace my crippling neuroses and do some pattern matching.

Neurotic Snails.

Cute little quilted windows.

See the little snail HSTs in the sashing? I like ‘em.

It was almost a shame to fold this adorable Japanese fabric into binding.

If you’d like to get a peek at this quilt in person, I do believe you’ll be seeing it at Quilt Con! And if you’d like to meet me I’ll probably be hiding behind my quilt listening for compliments and writing down the names of the haters.

A group within the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild is working together on a charity quilt featuring improvisational arrow blocks. Today I grabbed some scrap fabric and experimented with a piecing strategy.